Walter writes:

> However, the original posting referred to Morse's original code.  I
>  believe that the international Morse code used today differs from the
>  code originally used by Morse, and also from the code used in the good
>  old days, when the U.S. Marshall would go over to the telegraph office
>  to send out news of the latest bank robbery.  Perhaps some historians
>  can elaborate.

It's true that International Morse Code is different from Morse's original 
code, but not by much. Here are two very brief verbal histories regarding Morse:

     http://www.morsehistoricsite.org/history/morse.html
     http://www.morsehistoricsite.org/history/morse.html

As to the differences between the two code sets, please see:

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Morse_code

The differences are shown in a chart near the bottom of the page.

Samuel Morse didn't invent the telegraph, although he originally thought that 
he did, but even more importantly, what he did do was "pre-invent" Shannon's 
information theory a full century before Shannon. Both Morse code sets are 
surprisingly nearly optimal in their allocation of bits vis-a-vis their 
information content. "E's" are the most common letter in English, thus they should have 
the shortest requirement for transmission. Similarly, "t's" are the second 
most common letter, and they should be second, and so on.

It isn't surprising that Morse and Vail should have gotten it right. 
Anagrams, word puzzles and cryptography were common parlor games of the age, as 
evidenced especially by Edgar Allen Poe's writings, and knowing letter frequencies 
within words were necessary to solving the games.

Wirt Atmar

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